Color Matching challange

[smoothfluid]

I have been asked to try and make this photo [here]
more like this [here]

I have given it a good go; firstly with the simple match color, and also trying to reduct the full colour into a tritone but because it is much lighter I am struggling. I have a fair knowlege of PS so am not keen to be defeated!

All help greatly received.

[johnnieB]

hi - i'm new here too. i attempted to achieve the result you are looking for, but i'm now sure if i did. there are plenty of experts on this site who could do a much better job, but it was fun experimenting with it.

aside from hue/saturation, there are many layers for highlights, blending, multiply... i lost count of just how many layers i used -- just keep trying, your bound to get there.

post your results - i'm sure you'll get plenty of help.

good luck,

johnnieB

[smoothfluid]

I keep loosing my highlights! Somehow you kept yours. Maybe I am thinking too hard and should just rip into a multi-layer bonanza.
Cheers.

[Mig]

Smooth,

duplicate one of the channels in the channel pallette, then add contrast to this duplicated channel with curves, for example, and use it as a source for selection. activate the selection.
copy the darks and put them on their own layer and change the blend mode to multiply and reduce the opacity. copy the lights and change the blend mode to screen and reduce the opacity.
you'd do this by using the alpha channel you made earlier. activate the selection>copy contents of selection to another layer and change blend mode>activate selection again, but this time invert the selection> copy contents to their own layer and change blend mode, etc.
You'll have a contrasty picture.
Change the file to grayscale via your favourite method.
duplicate the file, then collapse the layers, then change mode to duotone and pick out a blue you like. copy/paste this file back onto the other one and mess with the opacity and colour.

There's other ways to do it, but this is one way and it's fairly straightforward.

Mig

[Daviskw]

Hi there

I read the post backwards...lol.. I am good at that so I have two versions. In both I tried to match the luminosity then I used gradient mapping to apply skin color. A small amount of burn and dodge for lighting. Last some noise filtering to even the skin tone

Butch

[Tpage]

I'm new to this but here's a quick attempt.

Made separate layers for the wall. skin and other bits.
Wall:
Blurred out the wall then added a gradient sampling colours from original wall to get the dark shadow similar to the original. smudged a little and added noise with small gaussian blur.
Skin
Duplicated skin, smoothed then dodged and burned using overlay method. blurred the overlay layer. Added texture back into skin using original skin layer with emboss and set to soft light. colorized with hue/sat adjustment layer.
Other bits:
used hue/sat & levelsto match in.

Need to spend more time on layer masks and other bits to lose edges etc, but pleased for first go in 10 mins.

Trevor

[oltenius]

This is my try... I used Curves, Gradient Map and Shadow/Highlight. Voila!

[Flora]

Hi,

welcome to RP to all new members!!!

smoothfluid,

is this in the right direction?

P.S. have a look at this Thread.. it deals with a similar request...

[philbach]

I desaturated the photo and worked to match the tones of both images. This required lowering the overall luminance and increasing the contrast. Next a lot of blurring using Neat Image and G blur. Finally I colorized the image by applying the color from the original to a copied layer using color blending mode.

[smoothfluid]

Sheez! I feel humbled. Thanks for all the ideas.
I have sorted the channel-to-light/dark-tones (was screening/multiplying the wrong layers! Doh!)
But the problem is things keep flattening out when I color her (solid colour set to color), and she ends up looking too bluey (or at the other end too desaturated) and less 'sliver' than she should.

[smoothfluid]

I'll never underestimate dodging and burning again. My high res file has a heap of noise which was messing with my eyes. As this will eventually be a web graphic it doesn't really matter as it disapears when the file is shrunk but it was holding me back.